


Get off the cross, we need that wood, and you alive

by waferkya



Category: Avengers (Comic), Marvel
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-22
Updated: 2011-04-22
Packaged: 2017-10-18 12:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/189036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waferkya/pseuds/waferkya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony's brain, boosted up by Extremis, gets a little distracted and allows his Body Control features to go and take a nap. What will Cap do about it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get off the cross, we need that wood, and you alive

**Author's Note:**

> — Be alerted that a couple of improbable details go on in this fic, and no, I'm not talking about the slash, because we all can agree that the Great and Epic Romance of Cap and Iron Man is pretty much canon as it is in the comics, thank you very much. Anyway I hope the ~*weird*~ little things I needed for the plot won't be too much of a bugger.  
> — I wrote this with only the Extremis arc in my mind, because I've been sick and I re-read fifteen times my hardcover of Iron Man: Extremis, Ellis-Granov, which, guess what, only has the Extremis arc in it. (Captain Obvious is being very much obvious tonight!) Ssssooo, don't expect great consistency with whatever happened right before in continuity, because I have the faintest recollection of that. You can imagine this fic is set in some slightly AU in which we're all almost happy right before Tony decides to screw up with his molecular structure, if it helps you not to hate me.  
> — Uh, what else? English is not my first language, so if you find any kind of messed up sentence or idiomatic expression, please blame WordReference. Thank you.  
> — The title is a bad, bad joke which compares Tony's fondness of selfdestruction to Jesus' martyrdom. It's Easter, afterall, and I've always had a thing for bad, bad jokes. I'm not sorry, but please keep in mind that I'm not trying to disrespect anyone, because I love you all, christened or not. Now let me go, I need to go back to Joseph of Arimathea's my tomb. I know I shouldn't have been out before Sunday, but wireless reception was utter crap in there. :D

The sky is always the same, even when you look at it through satellites and a brand new cybernetic brain. Tony stretches out his arms, aerodynamics and caution thrown straight to Hell, and smiles when half a second later all the sensors of his armour go batshit crazy, beeping histerically because the wind is too strong and he can’t keep flying like this up to New York if he cares about his elbows, and it’s oddly comforting, if you think about it, that an inanimate object can be so motherly concerned about him. Of course, the armour is doing nothing more than what Tony programmed it to, but it’s sort of a nice feeling anyway.

He puts his arms back to a more comfortable, safer position, diligently pressed to his sides, and the amour goes quiet again, except for the many thousands of websites, news feeds, phone calls and basically any kind of electronic interaction going on on the planet in this very moment it bombards him with. God, Tony loves Extremis so much. He’s had it for barely half a day and he can already see it’ll probably be the best thing he’s ever done to himself. He could have died, yeah, and there’s still the faint possibility of some circuit inside his head snapping and knocking him out, maybe for good, but anyway, this kind of absolute power, of almost if-not-quite omniscience, this is what Tony has been looking for all his life, really. He feels it deep down inside himself. With his brain and his body and his armour gone Extremis he can make a lot of good for the world, he really can help.

He goes for some acrobatics, then, too excited to put his instincts on a leash, because God, he can intercept Pyongyang’s Police communications just blinking his eyes the right way, and his Extremis-enhanced brain does the transcription and translation in a tenth of a second, when Tony himself never got past the numerals paragraph in his ‘Korean for Dummies’ textbook.

Extremis is the way to go, he decides, flipping upside down in the air and feeling unbelievably free in his armour. A small warning light starts to blink, off the corner of his vision, and Tony only notices because it’s green, at first, and then goes yellow and then it’s red and it’s kind of scary, this little raging dot flashing right in the middle of some Oprah re-run.

Tony turns a little bit to take a better look at it, it’s his airplane radar and it’s trying to tell him that in two minutes an unexpected jet is going to be right where his head is. Tony huffs, he’d thought it was some kind of major issue, and lets the autopilot kick in, dropping down a couple of feet mere istants before a huge, black thing roars its way in the opposite direction. Tony frowns slightly, equalizers silently readjusting the internal stability of the armour, and takes up a hand to tap the light, except that he can’t actually tap on it with his hands, of course, because it’s pretty much inside his brain, _of course_.

“A miscalculation like that could cost hundreds of innocent lives in battle,” he says, slightly worried, because what if Extremis is actually less efficient and less perfect than what he had anticipated? What if the painkillers and pain itself and maybe even his blown up hand did actually compromise his ability to reprogramme Maya’s original virus? Shit.

“No,” the armour says, with a slight accent it didn’t have before. “No miscalculation is allowed. You have just crossed a time meridiator.”

Of course, Tony should’ve thought so.

“You’re right,” he says, or should he say, _I’m right_? He’ll have to hire a couple of philosophers. “I’m sorry.”

The armour doesn’t reply, and Tony takes a mental note to try and make it less meticulous, at least in emergency situations. He snorts some sort of laughter when the note actually appears right in front of his nose, scribbled on a bright yellow, arrow-shaped sticker. Then he goes back to international surveillance duties, trusting autopilot to bring him safely home.

 

*

 

Steve is doing some paperwork, sitting at the kitchen’s table in the Avengers Mansion, sipping a coffee he made himself and which isn’t half as good as the one he usually steals from Tony. Over the last few years, Steve has grown consistently more confident that the coffee machine, this huge, italian-made blue thing, hates him to bits; he has evidence, too, for example the fact that it’s costantly flashing its little red lights at him, or angrily huffing steam to his face, and he’s tried to warn some of his teammates, but he has the distinct sensation that they didn’t really take the Coffee Machine Alert very seriously.

They’ll regret it, when it will finally become sentient and try to poison their daily dose of holy caffeine, but Steve will be there to protect them, fierce and epic and stars and stripes all over his chest, once more. Yeah, that’s exactly how it will end, unless the evil coffee maker manages to kill him first, because in that case, they all’d be doomed.

Some security back-up alarms make a little noise, somewhere across the room, and Steve tears his eyes from the boring S.H.I.E.L.D. report he’s reviewing for Nick Fury, just in time to see a little stylized Iron Man icon blinking a couple of times on the surveillance screen on the opposite wall. A small smile is playing on his lips even before his brain processes the information that Tony is back home.

“Hey, Steve,” Iron Man’s synthetic voice comes from the door, and Steve slightly turns his head to look at him, still smiling. He even holds up a hand to wave a little, because there’s no point in hiding how happy he is to see Tony presumably back in one piece.

“Welcome home,” he says, as Iron Man comes forward into the room, his armour silent as some kind of giant, metallic, red and gold cougar. It’s a different suit than the one he was wearing last time they saw each other, Steve notices. It looks slimmer but more solid, and also it seems to move much more smoothly than ever. If it wasn’t so obviously there, Steve would even doubt Tony was wearing something else than his clothes. “You look good.”

“Do I?” The little playfulness in his voice is clear even through the speakers and the familiar distortion, and Steve can’t keep himself from wondering what’s making Tony so obviously happy. “Why thank you, I polished the armour yesterday.”

Steve chuckles a bit, and Tony actually comes to sit down across the table, right in front of him. God bless reinforced chairs, once again.

“No, I didn’t mean that,” Steve says, mindlessly playing with a pencil. “You sound happy. I... heard what happened in Washington with that old friend of yours, and I was worried. We all were.”

Tony frowns a bit under his mask, but it doesn’t last much. Of course Steve would hear about Maya and Mallen; he’s Steve, he’s Captain America, and it’s not like Tony made an effort to keep his last little adventure a secret. He’s kind of surprised, though, that Steve would take out this particular topic so soon, so openly. He seems a bit uneasy, too, and Tony can’t quite put his finger on why he should.

“I see,” he says, anyway, and decides to lift up the visor because he’s starting to feel a little bit warm. The armour has an internal thermostat, but it’s not uncanny for it to be a little off, considering all the recent changes in, well, Tony’s biological structure. “Well, it all got sorted out in the end,” he shrughs slightly, and puts his chin on his still gloved hand, looking intentedly at Steve. “I just, uh. I wish I didn’t have to blow the guy’s head.”

Steve flinches for a second at the strained coldness in Tony’s tone, and he can’t help the urge to reach over the table and put a reassuring hand on top of Tony’s. He wishes he wasn’t still wearing his damn armour, and for a second he contemplates the possibility of stroking his cheek, but that would be, what’s the word for it? Inappropriate. Over-friendly. Too much of a giveaway.

“You did what you had to,” he says, instead, and God, why does it sound so lame to his own ears? “You couldn’t let him take you down, could you?”

“No, of course not,” Tony mutters, softly, and there, right there in his eyes Steve sees it: a doubt, a question. _Why couldn’t I let him take me down?_ And he squeezes Tony’s cold, metal hand, hoping his sensors or something are sophisticated enough to convey his touch. They aren’t, not really, but Tony is grateful anyway. “But still, I wish I didn’t have to.”

Steve just smiles, now, kind and supportive and proud of him, and Tony sighs. He can bet his arms and his armour Steve won’t be so adorably father-ish when Tony will drop the news about Extremis. They won’t talk to each other for a week, at least, and that’s the brightest scenario.

“I think you should go take a nap,” Steve says, his smile almost a smug grin now, and Tony wonders briefly, for the thousandth time – nine hundred and seventy-third, Extremis provides, dutifully, – how can he possibly be like this, so full of positivity and goodness and so freaking _nice_ , with all he’s seen and gone through in his life. That’s the one thing that, in Tony Stark’s very humble opinion, defines Steve Roger and Captain America, and forever will: his neverending niceness, like a bottomless well of all that’s gentle and smiling and bright in the world. That’s also the one thing Tony loves the most about him, probably, ex aequo with his broad shoulders.

“Yeah, I think I should,” he agrees, but he doesn’t make a move, too lazy to tear his eyes off of Steve’s, that’s his official excuse if anyone’ll ever bother to ask, and Steve doesn’t, either. And then Tony notices his half empty cup of coffee, and smirks. “I’ll make you some real coffee first, though, okay?”

And as Steve smiles the brightest, most beautiful of his smiles, Tony stands up, and sighs, a little bit, Extremis beeping quietly on the back of his skull to alert him that his heart rate inexplicably spiked up.  
 __

 _Inexplicably my ass,_ Tony thinks, and punches a couple of buttons on the coffee machine; if his brain was a separate entity, it’d now look at him with a big frown all over his convolutions, because Tony could’ve easily controlled the machine remotely while sitting at the table. He’d have glared at it, then, pointing eloquently at Steve, and his brain would’ve widened its non-existing eyes, suddenly remembering their ‘let’s not blow this Extremis thing in Steve’s face until we can’t really really really help it anymore’ resolution.

 

*

 

Tony’s nap lasts all day long, he doesn’t show up for lunch or their early dinner or any kind of snack in the middle, and Steve knows that because he’s almost never left the Avengers’ kitchen. Super villains in New York City these days seem to have lost most of their predecessors’ skills and cruelty and tactics, and by the time his costant worry for Tony becomes this huge, unbearable rock on his lungs he’s already thwarted three crisises and he’s been out of the Avengers’ Mansion for no longer than fifty minutes overall.

He asks Jarvis if Tony came down while he was out, and the butler shakes his head, he says Master Stark didn’t even bother to answer the door when he went knocking to tell him it was lunch time. Steve frowns, fastens his shield’s strap across his chest and takes the stairs up to Tony’s room.

He kept an eye on the surveillance display in the kitchen all day long, so he knows no shell head flew out of any window; he’s worried, though, that Tony might have turned his own bedroom into a lab or an emergency workshop, kicking furniture to pieces to get nails or something. That would be very much like Tony. But God, why would he do that? It’s not like Steve locked him in, or banished him from his actual workshop, he just gently suggested he should take a nap, he didn’t even make a mock threat.

Ergo, no, there’s no way Tony would go engineering-berserk on them and start working on his armour in his damn bedroom. There must be something else, something serious, maybe, or maybe he was just exhausted and needed his twenty straight hours of beauty sleep.

Either way, Steve needs to make sure he’s alright.

He jumps up the last three steps, instead of going up them like a sane, normal man of his age, and merely a second later he’s knocking on Tony’s door. He doesn’t hear any noise coming from the room, no hammer clashing against hot, melting metal, nor a drill and not even the television, and he starts to get even more worried, because if he’s not working and he’s not watching junk procedural tv shows then what’s Tony doing all alone in there?

He’s practically banging with his open hand on the door, at some point, and he decides he might as well go all the way and force his way in. He doesn’t have a key, he doesn’t need it, because there’s an electronic lock on the wall and Steve knows the combination; he punches the code in, fourteen numbers he remembers just because Tony read them out loud to him, lets the laser-scan run over his thumb’s fingerprint and finally the door unlocks with a faint click. It’s not an extremely sophisticated security system, of course, but the room itself is into the Avengers’ Mansion, which is probably the most difficult place in town to force your way into, even worse than the Baxter Building, plus Tony usually spends so little time in his bedroom that he doesn’t need to be particularly paranoid about it.

Steve pushes the door open, trying not to make any noise in case Tony is actually asleep, and sneaks in, his eyes quickly adjusting to the orange, dense light pouring in from the huge full-lenght window wall opposite to Tony’s bed. The sun’s almost completely set behind the sharp skyline of the city, and it’s kind of beautiful.

Steve’s heart feels funny, anyway, maybe it skipped a beat, when he takes in the empty bed and, after a moment of quickly scanning the room, _Tony,_ lying on the floor by his desk, his face tilted sideways, eyes closed, apparently asleep, and completely naked. Iron Man’s armour is nowhere in sight, but Steve doesn’t really care about ridiculously expensive paraphernalia. He’s already kneeling next to Tony, carefully taking hold of his wrist to check his pulse; it’s there, even but maybe a bit too slow, and Tony’s breathing, too, which is a relief, and he doesn’t seem to have a fever or anything, he’s probably just worn-out. Which doesn’t explain why he decided to sleep naked on the floor, but he might as well have fainted there in a failed attempt to reach the bathroom or something.

Steve sighs, then hooks an arm under Tony’s knees, trying desperately to ignore everything that’s there from his underbelly to the soft curve of his thighs, and he puts the other arm around his back, lifting him up with no effort whatsoever; Steve has the unpleasant feeling that Tony might have lost some weight, _a lot_ of weight, but it could be just a hollow speculation, since last time he had him in his arms like this, Tony was wearing his armour. Still, he looks kind of pale, and he’s a bit too cold; what worries and scares Steve the most, though, is that Tony doesn’t move in the slightest, not to snuggle against his chest and not even when Steve gently puts him to bed.

Tony just lies there, on the mattress, as if he was still on the floor. Steve looks at his face for a moment, frowning, then goes to pick a couple of clean blankets from his closet to cover him up. He tucks him in, can’t resist the urge to pet his hair a bit, and no, Tony doesn’t even flinch, completely still, and Steve now is beyond worry.

He gently tugs him, trying to wake him up.

“Tony,” he says, his voice soft and warm and maybe he’s too close to his ear, but he just doesn’t want to startle him awake. “Tony, hey, wake up. I think you’ve had enough of a nap, you’ve been sleeping the whole day.”

Tony doesn’t react, he gives no sign of having heard him or anything, so Steve shakes him more energically.

“Tony,” his voice is serious now, deadpan, like an order. Avengers assemble. “Tony, wake up.”

But Tony doesn’t.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Steve doesn’t panic just because he’s Captain America and they probably took away his very ability to panic with the Super Soldier Serum. He wishes he could hyperventilate, though, because no matter how he tries to shut down his brain right now, it keeps feeding him the worst hypothesis on why Tony isn’t waking up.

“Calm down,” he orders himself, but he’s so calm already it’s almost redundant. “Don’t think,” now, that’s a better piece of advice. He breathes in, he breathes out, and puts a hand on Tony’s forehead, which is going colder and colder by the minute. “Tony,” he says, barely a whisper. “What have you done?”

“I can show you, but I’m afraid it would just make you very angry,” Tony’s voice says, and Steve practically jumps away from him, his eyes wide in surprise.

“What the--” he mutters, slowly approaching the bed again, because he’s kind of sure Tony’s lips didn’t move. “Tony?”

“Yeah, that’s my name,” Tony says, but it can’t be him, because his body is as fucking _still_ as a marble statue.

“How can I possibly hear you if you’re not speaking?” Steve asks, leaning forward a bit to be sure that Tony’s lips are, in fact, absolutely motionless.

“Well, uh,” he hears a faint shuffling noise, like cables shifting over some other cables. “I’m... I’m sorry, Steve, I didn’t really get that, you bent right in the middle of the sentence and you got off camera. Can you, I don’t know, straighten up? Or get closer to the intercom, that would be perfect.”

Closer to the intercom? What the Hell is Tony talking about? Steve does straighten up, however, and as he does he sees, up in a corner of the ceiling, the red blinking light of a surveillance camera. He frowns.

“Are you watching me through that?” he asks, pointing at the lens, and then thinks, _that’s stupid, how can he possibly be watching from the main surveillance room if he’s right here beside me?_

“Uh, yeah,” Tony’s voice says, and this time Steve notices that the intercom green light is on, as well, as if somebody was talking through it. Oh, God.

“Tony,” he says, anger growing hot like lava in his chest. “What have you done? What is this... _this_?” And he waves his hands, encompassing the lifeless body on the bed.

“Uh, that’s... my body, Steve, I guess,” Tony says, a bit cautiously, and Steve huffs, he’s so confused he might very well explode.

“Your body? How can you possibly be speaking through the intercom and watching me through our closed-circuit video surveillance, if your body is right here in front of me?”

There’s some white noise, and for a long, breathless moment Steve seriously considers the possibility of strangling Iron Man next time he meets him in the hallway, regardless of any friendship, alliance and unspoken, nameless things he might or might not feel for him.

“Uh,” Tony says, then, and now he’s clearly uneasy. “Can you... I’m sorry, Steve, I didn’t get it. If you could come closer to the intercom, I--”

Steve practically stomps all the way to the damn intercom, then, and smashes his whole hand against the big bright yellow button you need to press in order to be heard by whoever is listening.

“Tony, enough with your silly games,” he growls, low in his throat, because God, _his heart skipped a beat_. “You tell me what’s going on, boy, and you tell me _now._ ”  
That must be the first time he’s ever addressed Tony as a _boy_ , if you come to think about it, and it feels odd, unfamiliar, not entirely pleasant, but Steve is angry, right now, and disappointed by Tony’s behaviour. He’s hurting, so he doesn’t mind.

“I... it’s complicated,” Tony sighs, but somehow the intercom doesn’t quite convey his tone.

“I’m sure you can find a way to make it simple enough so I can understand,” Steve replies, unusually sarcastic, still leaning on the wall with his full weight, his hands pinned to the expensive wallpaper.

“I, uh, alright,” Tony says, and Steve breathes, ready to take it in, except that he’s not, not really. “Maya was working on some enhancing biotech virus, which basically turns humans into indestructible multiskilled weapons. She sold it to some terrorists, so that they could spread panic and force the government to fund her medical research. I realized she had such a scheme when everything was over, though.”

“That’s not the point, Tony,” Steve warns, head slightly bent, glaring at the intercom, and he hears a soft, metallic snort, which mostly sounds like someone’s been scraping damaged fuse wires together.

“Yeah, I’m getting to it,” Tony bites back, slightly offended, Steve can tell. “I faced the guy, he almost killed me. I, uh. Maya had another shot of the virus, I didn’t know about her plan and, well. I made a couple of alterations of my own, and. I got injected.”

“You did what?!”

“I had to! It was the best thing to do, the _only_ thing to do, actually. I couldn’t have won against Mallen any other way.”

“You could’ve called us!” Steve protests, outraged. “No, you _should_ have called us, Tony, what’s the point in having a team if you don’t ask for their help?”

“I couldn’t, Steve. I had to face it on my own. Besides, the Extremis enhancement, it’s exactly what I needed. You know I’ve been trying for a while to develop some of the armour’s control devices, and I couldn’t make it react quickly enough,” now Tony’s talking so quickly his words almost stumble on one another, and Steve has to force himself not to bang his head against the wall out of frustration. “On the long run, it’d have become a major issue, I really had to solve this problem-- and that’s what Extremis does! Steve, I control the armour with my brain now, we are physically one thing. I heal faster, I think faster, I have access to satellites, phones, basically anything that has a transistor in it, I can control it, remotely, just blinking my eyes.” He sounds so happy, almost like a child on Christmas, and Steve just really wants to punch him in the face or something.

“You turned yourself into a robot,” he says, colder than he meant to.

“I _evolved_ ,” Tony says, and Steve shakes his head.

“You were right, I’m really angry right now,” he mumbles, pressing a hand to his face to regain some sort of control. “But we’ll talk about that later. I’ll hit you later, and I promise you, Tony, you won’t like it. Now tell me,” and he sighs, heavily, turning a bit to look at Tony’s body, still flat under the covers. “How comes you don’t wake up? Did you... did you lose control over your body, or something?”

“I’m... I’m not sure,” Tony says, quietly. “My brain is working, which is why I am able to talk to you, and all my other vital functions are okay, I’m sure you’ve checked already.”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Yeah, so. I’m not... I don’t really know, Steve. You’re right, it seems like I can’t wake up, and I can’t control my body, but, I mean, we can’t be sure Extremis has something to do with it.”  
 __

 _Extremis,_ Steve repeats slowly in his mind, and he thinks, _well, it sounds awful._

“Of course we can’t be sure,” he says, however, slightly rolling his eyes. Tony and his shiny hi-tech stuff he loves more than himself, which wouldn’t be surprising, and probably more than any other person in the universe, which actually is a bit disappointing, and then some. Not that Steve’s arrogant enough to consider himself one of Tony’s most beloved ones, of course. “You just happen to mess with your biological structure, how could that be in any way an issue for your body?”

“I didn’t _mess_ with it,” Tony protests, and Steve knows that if he was actually himself he’d be frowning so much his forehead would get all wrinkled. “I knew perfectly well what I was doing.”

“You said it yourself, that Mallen guy almost got you killed,” Steve objects, softly, and he can hear Tony – or the intercom, or the whole building or all of the world’s technology, whatever it is, – gape a little bit.

“I was in full possession of all of my mental faculties, thank you,” he says, after a while, and Steve sighs. He wants to say, _you’re never in full possession of any of you mental faculties, when your life is at stake. You value the rest of the world so much more than yourself that you can’t be trusted when making that kind of decision._ He wants to say, _you’ll always think self-destruction is the easiest way to solve any problem._

“Alright,” he says, instead, and his head hurts. “Please tell me you’ve already called Reed and Hank.”

“I emailed them both half an hour ago, as soon as I woke up. Or, I mean, _didn’t_ wake up,” Tony says, and Steve frowns.

“Half an hour ago?”

“Yeah, I know,” Tony sighs. “You’d expect them to be a little quicker when an emergency like this is going on.”

“No, no,” Steve shakes his head, because that’s _not_ what’s making him frown more than an unannounced chemistry test on Monday morning. “I mean, you only came to your senses – or _didn’t_ , whatever – half an hour ago?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s been quite a challenge to find a way to talk to you, you know, since, well, I can’t move my mouth and everything,” Tony’s voice says. “I’d really, really love to bore you with the details of how I’m replicating my voice using an old recorder and some wires, but our belated doctors are coming in.”

And Steve turns around just in time to see the door swinging open, Mister Fantastic’s head poking in, his neck stretched beyond human.

“Hello, Steve,” Reed greets, his shoulders soon appearing into view, and then his torso, his legs, and when he gets completely into the room, down to his last molecule, he’s already forgotten about Steve and anything else, already focused on Tony’s pale, still body.

Hank Pym comes in afterwards, and he’s a bit more polite. He and Steve shake hands, and they share a knowing, kind-of-sad look. Reed is muttering unintelligible things under his breath, leaning and stretching over the bed to take closer looks to Tony’s body. Hank sighs, and joins him.

“He’s unconscious,” Reed declares, after a few moments of his throughout examination, and Steve has to choke back a groan. “But he isn’t feverish, on the contrary, he seems to be kind of cold. Too cold to be comfortable, actually.”

“The blankets will work, for now,” Hank says, matter-of-factly, and Steve leans against the wall, suddenly tired. “But I still can’t believe that he did what he said he did.”

“Tell me about it,” Steve mumbles, softly.

“Please, gentlemen, don’t be absurd,” Tony’s voice says, from the intercom, and Steve is kind of relieved when he sees both Reed and Hank jump to their feet, surprised, and start to look around franctically. “I would never lie about such a serious matter. Besides, I believe it’s kinda clear that my body, as for now, is completely useless.”  
 __

 _Don’t say that,_ Steve wants to say, but there’s Reed’s head coming towards him – towards the intercom, actually, – at full stretching speed, and that’s a sight that can take away even Captain America’s will of scolding Iron Man.

“Tony?” Reed asks, looking closely at the speaker’s grid. “Are you in there? Oh, of course you’re not,” he shakes his head. “You’re controlling the audio transmission system, right? Manipulating old recordings of your voice to form phrases, or something?”

“Or something,” Tony says, and if his body was still answering his brain’s orders, he’d be grinning right now. “You’ll be amazed to know the many wonders of Extremis.”

“Tell me about it,” Reed says, very seriously, and that’s when Steve decides he can’t take it anymore.

He steps off of the wall, lifting his hands in the air, surrendering.

“I don’t want to hear any of this,” he says. “I’ll be in my room if you need me. I trust the two of you to solve this... mess we have in our hands. Thank you.”

And he walks out of the room, not even waiting for an answer.

 

*

 

Steve puts away his shield, takes off his costume and wears a t-shirt and the softest sweatpants he owns. He’s decided to call it a night, because he can’t really think straight and as much as he wants to be out there on the streets, kicking criminal asses and steaming off stress and irritation, he knows perfectly well he’d be a walking threat himself, probably more dangerous than most of the poor bastards New York City can offer these days for him to put to jail.

He’s nervous, angry and disappointed by Tony’s behavior, but mostly by himself, because, once more, he failed to make his friend understand just how much they need him, alive and functioning. Sometimes, Steve thinks it might just be a lost cause, with Tony; the thought itself is enough to make him ache all the way down to his bones.

“God, Tony,” he whispers to himself, pressing his forehead to the cold glass of his window, and then he lets out a heavy sigh. “Are you there?”

There’s a short silence, and then:

“I am now,” Tony’s voice comes, low and hesitant, from the intercom on the other side of the room, and Steve sighs again. He turns around, leaning his back against the window, and crosses his arms on his chest.

“Reed and Hank are still there?”

“Yeah, they’re... uh, they’re running tests, muttering hypothesis to themselves, using endless German words full of consonants to make me look like an ass. The usual stuff, I think.”

“But they can’t hear what you’re saying to me, can they?” Steve asks, half a smirk curving his lips upwards, and he hears the soft buzz of the camera in the corner zooming on his face. That almost makes his smirk slip off.

“Of course not,” Tony says, anyway. “Unless they’re eavesdropping through the door, which... they aren’t, I just checked.”

“Alright,” Steve sighs again, and maybe he’s turning into a teapot, he should put his hand on his hip and twist the other wrist in the air. Tony showed him the right position, once, mocking his karate lessons.

“If this, uh. If this is the part when you intend to hit me, and I can tell it by your face that you want to hit me very hard right now, I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with the intercom, that’s... as much as interaction I can provide you, ATM,” Tony says, and God only knows if he’s joking or if he even realizes how much his words are hurting Steve.

“I don’t want to hit an intercom, Tony, I want to break your neck, the real one,” Steve says, matter-of-factly, and takes a step forward, his arms still crossed, his eyes narrow. “I just... I want to ask you something. I’d rather ask it to your face, but God, we don’t even,” and he stops, bites he tip of his tongue, because he can’t really say it, not yet, not ever.

“We don’t know if I’ll ever regain control of my face, yeah,” Tony fills in for him, and now Steve wants to punch him so bad he might even decide to _make do_.

“Yeah,” he nods, instead. “Thank you very much.”

“No problem.” There’s a pause, which Steve supposes Tony is desperately trying to fill with a synthetic sigh, which he seems unable to recreate. “So. Our million dollars question would be...?”

“Why did you do that?” Steve asks, his face flat, but maybe his hard tone gave him away.

“Wow,” Tony says. “I was joking, but that was an actual million dollars question, if you come to think about it.”

“Tony,” Steve warns, growing impatient, and he runs a hand through his hair, he’s tired, he’s never been so tired. “Why did you do that? Why is it that you’re always, always so willing to crucify yourself for the cause?”

Tony seems to be deeply lost in thought or something, maybe he’s just gone for good, scared and hurt by Steve’s question, but then he hears a light shuffling sound.

“Same reason you got into the Serum project, Cap,” Tony says, his voice so low Steve has to take another two steps forward to hear him. “I just wanted to help. And, just like you, I was pretty confident it wouldn’t have killed me.”

“Oh, really? And how much is _pretty confident_ , exactly? Give me the numbers, Stark, and don’t you try to lie to me.”

Tony doesn’t answer straight away, and Steve can feel the floor collapsing under his feet.

“Well, uh,” the answer comes, finally. “Can I stick to my first statement, please? That I was _pretty confident_?”

Steve huffs, throws a punch to his bedside table and smashes it through the second drawer.

“Ugh, that must’ve hurt,” Tony says, and Steve glares at the intercom, then at the surveillance camera.

“That must’ve hu-- _Tony_!” he snaps, his hands in the air, and starts to pace angrily across the room, because ‘calm and collected’ never seems to work on Tony, not as well as an angry rant does, anyway. “You are Iron Man, you do _help_ already! And that’s exactly why I can’t have you go put your life on the line making stupid, reckless decisions, like inject yourself with some virus the very second they offer it to you!”

Tony wishes he could shuffle his feet, right now. He is pure conscience, somehow melt, fused to the technological equipment of the building, of the city, of the whole damn _world_ , even, he can move across the globe through Internet and satellites and electronic communication and he can’t really understand how is it possible that his very essence – his soul, he’d say, if he had ever, at least once in his life believed in such things, – got embedded into this hell of a nest, but all he wishes for, right now, is that he could shuffle awkwardly his feet. He wishes he could twist his fingers and bite his lips and look away from Steve, and he can’t because he doesn’t have a body and that freaking camera has a wide-angle lens that takes in the whole room to its last corner.

Jesus Christ.

“I, uh,” he says, and he finds out that talking is becoming surprisingly difficult, maybe because of Steve’s angry blue gaze. God, Tony wants to shiver so much it makes all the cables in the building hurt, if that even makes any sense. “I’m sorry you have, uh, this kind of worries.”

“And whose fault is it, Tony?” Steve huffs, exasperated. “Look, I’m your friend, not your... drill sergeant. I don’t enjoy yelling at you.”

“Are you sure?”

“ _Yes,_ Tony, I’m sure,” Steve sighs, and goes to sit on the edge of his bed, because, really, it’s exhausting. And terrible. And the only way things could go better would be if Steve punched Tony in the face and then hugged him for maybe a century, but Tony’s body is still presumably dead upstairs. God, why does everything have to be so fucking _excruciating_? “So, please. If you don’t want to do it out of respect for yourself, could you please do it for the team? For me?” He sighs again, resting his hands on his knees and looking at the camera with the most honest, tired look face in the whole history of Captain America’s honest, tired faces. “Stop trying to annihilate my best friend every other week, please.”

And maybe that’s enough to do the magic, because Tony finds himself at a loss of words and disconnects, Steve sees the lights on both the intercom and the surveillance camera turn off. He closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and hopes with all he’s got that it’s a good sign.

 

 

  


* * *

  


 

After a full night of inspections and hypothesis and tickling Tony’s toes to see if there’s a reaction, Reed declares that there’s no need to be worried. He says that Tony’s body is perfectly healthy, is DNA is still in one piece and that his brain is working like crazy. He shows around his encephalogram, and it’s the usual bunch of lines which mean nothing to Steve. Reed says it’s like Tony’s system is rebooting, to adjust to all the new, upgraded features he added; he chuckles lightly, and says everything’s okay, they should just let him take his time to reassest. You don’t want to force your computer’s starting procedure, he says, and Steve wonders if that joke was supposed to make him laugh.

Hank nods solemnly behind Reed’s back throughout the whole explanation.

“He’ll need some more time, hours, maybe, or maybe another day at the longest, Cap,” he says, smiling softly and squeezing Steve’s shoulder as he goes past him to leave Tony’s room. “We’ll be back tomorrow to check on him, anyway, if it can help you get some sleep.”

Steve runs a hand over his tired face and sighs.

“Yeah, thank you,” he says, managing a small, restless smile which he hopes is enough for Hank. It isn’t, but he nods once more and leaves anyway. Reed follows straight after, a lot of paperwork stuffed in his arms and Steve just waves, not even looking at him, not really.

Reed closes the door behind his back with a flick of his ankle, and Steve is left there, standing alone awkwardly in the middle of the room, aware of the fact that Tony – his brain, his soul, whatever part of him that’s haunting the building, – is watching and listening. He doesn’t know what to say, he doesn’t even know if he should leave as well and go make something productive out of this new day.

“Jarvis is making pancakes for Peter, apparently he’s here for breakfast again,” Tony’s voice says, out of the blue, the tone casual and detached and Steve can’t really know if he’s really this much at ease or if it’s just the intercom. “Should I tell him to make you some as well?”

“No,” Steve answers, his mouth faster than his brain. “Thanks, I’m not hungry.”

Tony bites back a remark about the importance of an healthy breakfast, because it’d be so extremely unappropriate coming from _him_ , the man who sistematically forgets to eat and sleep and whatever. The man who probably won’t need to do any of that anymore, anyway, when and if his body decides to go back to its duties.

“As you wish,” Tony says, instead, and that’s it, conversation is over. Steve is not one to get easily uncomfortable, but he shoves his hands deep into his pants’ pockets and bends his head, embarrassed. He wants to get out of this room, he wants to get Tony’s body out of his view, actually, but he can’t really find the strenght to do it. He’s angry, he’s sad, he can’t figure out a way to solve this.

“Why does it have to be so complicated?” he mutters, under his breath, and he’s sure Tony heard him but no witty reply comes. Steve is grateful. “I can go, if you want me to,” he says, louder, after a moment, and as the words leave his mouth he cringes at how wrong they sound.

“Uh, I... well, no,” Tony replies, uncertain, and Steve wants to smack himself. “I mean, of course if you want to go I’m not gonna trap you here.”

“I’m sorry, no,” Steve says, immediately, holding up his hands and shaking his head. “That’s not what I wanted to say.”

“Oh. Alright.”

“You know,” he tries again, because he can’t really go quiet again, not after that. “Once I’ve heard something you might like, you might find useful.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They say, _errare humanum est but you need a computer to screw up things spectacularly_ ,” Steve says, hoping his point is clear now. He relaxes a bit, when he hears some sort of awkward chuckle coming from Tony, the intercom.

“I’m familiar with that motto,” he says.

“And you still want to turn yourself into a computer, Tony?”

“Extremis doesn’t turn me into a computer, Steve,” Tony explains, patient. “I’ll still have feelings, and emotions, and my ratio right where it should be. It just... it enhances my brain. Allows me to do things I could only _imagine_ and dream of.”

“It shut off your body,” Steve says, quietly. He’s tired of fighting, he just wants to make Tony realize that he’s perfect exactly the way he is, that he doesn’t need anything more than what he already has.

“It’s just transitional, you heard Reed.”

“And do you think he’s right?”

“He usually is, so yeah, I don’t have any reason to doubt his judgment. Look, Steve, I... I’m glad, okay? That we’re talking, that you’re worried about me, I’m really grateful for that. You’re a good friend, the best I’ve ever had. Probably the best ever,” Tony attempts a sigh, and almost succeedes. “But I think you might be overreacting. Extremis is good for me, for us.”

Steve stays quiet for a while, his head lazily submerged of thoughts, fears, words he can’t really put in line to give them any kind of sense. He sighs, eventually.

“I think I’m just scared, Tony,” he admits, running a hand through his hair. “I’m scared, because I realized I still don’t know what you’re capable of, how many borders you could cross, to get what you want. What you _think_ you want. How far would you go, before realizing it’s time to stop and get back? Or would you even realize it? I don’t know, and it scares me the most. I don’t know how to explain it better,” except that he does, he really does. And maybe honesty, true, real honesty is the only way to make things right; Captain America does that all the time, does he not? Be bluntly sincere because everything left unsaid is as bad as a lie. “I think I just love you, Tony, and I wish I could make you see what _I_ see when I look at you.”

He looks up, and notices there’s no blinking light coming from the intercom or the camera. He frowns, and then he hears blankets shuffling and a soft moan.

“God,” Tony’s voice says, and Steve turns around quickly and sees him, _him_ , sitting up on the bed, a hand to his hair and his face scrunched up in a pained expression. “God, it hurts. But it’s awesome. But it _hurts_.”

“Tony,” Steve says, and keeps his mouth slightly open, in utter, comical surprise. “Tony, are you okay?”

“I’m, uh,” Tony looks at him, blinks a couple of times, sets his shoulders and smirks. “Yeah, I’m fine. I could use a shower, and some breakfast, but I’m fine. No, better, make it a lunch. Or a dinner, I don’t know. I’m hungry.”

“Tha... that’s good,” Steve manages to nod, still slightly astonished, and he tries not to focus too much on Tony’s chest when he starts stretching lazily.

“I’m sorry, Steve, I got back in here while you were talking,” he says, after a moment, flattening out a couple of creases on the blankets. “And I think I lost most of what you were saying. That was extremely rude of me, I know, but I didn’t do it on purpose.”

“I know you didn’t,” Steve says, and he’s torn, now, in two, half of him eternally grateful because Tony didn’t hear him make a fool of himself, that’s great, and the other half cursing very loudly inside his head, because, for God’s sake, he’d felt so much better, once he had gotten that weight off his chest. “Don’t worry about it, it wasn’t... well, it wasn’t really important. I’m glad you... are okay. Because you’re okay, right?”

“Yes, I’m perfectly fine,” Tony chuckles lightly, and Steve narrows his eyes, studying his face, his small, intimate smile, that glimpse of light in his eyes. “I can recover the tapes from the camera in a second, anyway, just let me... ah, yes, here you are.”

And it happens so fast Steve doesn’t even have the time to flail and order Tony not to watch that stuff because _oh God don’t, don’t, don’t_ ; Tony’s smile widens a little, then he goes sad, a painful expression of guilt and sorrow staining his beautiful face, and then, then, _then_ his eyes go big and wide and confused, surprised, even scared for a second. He doesn’t turn to look at Steve, though, keeps staring at nothing in particular, probably watching his pathetic speech over and over again.

“God, Tony, I’m sorry,” Steve says, taking a step forward towards the bed. “It’s... sappy, I know. And extremely old-fashioned and pathetic. And I’m sorry, I really am. I... screwed up.” He smirks, he’s bitter, sad, he hates himself because from now on it’s gonna be awkward, and terrible, and impossible for them to work together again. Well done, Cap. “I guess this is actual proof I’m not as much of the _peak of human perfection_ as they all think I am.”

Tony slowly turns to look at him, his face blank now, his eyes dark and dense and Steve can’t really suppress a smile because he wasn’t lying, he really loves Tony. He just doesn’t really have the courage to admit it all the time, that’s it.

“ _I_ think you are perfect,” Tony says, matter-of-factly, and Steve, were him anybody else except Wolverine, would have blushed. But he’s Captain America, so he doesn’t, he just bows his head gently, accepting the compliment.

“And you’re wrong, just like anybody else, but I thank you anyway,” he says, and then the bed creaks softly, and Tony is crawling towards him on the mattress, blankets slipping off of him, exposing skin, beautiful, slightly tan skin, his many pink scars, the deep curve of his back. Steve swallows a gulp of air and his lungs are still empty.

“I’m never wrong, Steve,” Tony whispers, and then he leans forward until his lips are on Steve’s, and Steve is so surprised, so taken aback that he almost forgets to kiss him back. Almost, because after a second he gets it together and _kisses_ , and when he does he can’t really control himself. He cups Tony’s face with both his hands and keeps him there still, hungrily kissing his way into his mouth, to his tongue, and God, it feels good, it’s perfect. Tony think he’s drowning, maybe he’s dreaming, and he puts his callused palms to the back of Steve’s neck. When they part, slowly and breathless, he pushes forwards and upwards a bit more, brushing his nose against Steve’s cheek.

“I love you too, Steve,” he says, and he’s blushing, and Steve’s suddenly hyperaware of it. He moves his hands in a soft caress down Tony’s neck, his shoulders and then to his back, the sharp angle of his hips.

Steve pushes his forehead to Tony’s, he looks at him and probably even through him, through all the firewalls and defenses Extremis encoded all around his brain and his heart. He sees _him_ , he sees Tony Stark, straight to the deepest place inside him, which is fairly terrible, like some kind of dive in the middle of nowhere, but it’s Tony’s, and that’s what Steve cares about.

Maybe Tony is close enough, right now, to see himself reflected in Steve’s impossibly blue eyes, and maybe he’ll stop, for a moment, and realize that he is flawed, and he is human, and he doesn’t need to make a tragedy out of it. It’s okay, it really is. Then again, Steve wouldn’t love him this much, if it wasn’t.


End file.
